INTRO, CHAPTERS 1 & 5 + QUESTIONS

THE

CALL

FINDING AND FULFILLINGTHE CENTRAL PURPOSE

OF YOUR LIFE

OS GUINNESS

A

INTRODUCTION

re you looking for purpose in life? For a purpose big enough to absorbevery ounce of your attention, deep enough to plumb every mystery of

your passions, and lasting enough to inspire you to your last breath? Thisbook is about the reason why we are each here on earth. It explores thedeepest, highest, grandest purpose that any human has ever experienced andhistory has ever known—a reason so profound that no one and nothing elseeven comes close.

Are you serious about looking for such purpose? For the search has to beserious because there are so many inadequate answers offered today. The airis abuzz with glittering talk of purpose that is empty. Never have so manybooks and seminars offered such simple steps and such low-hanging answersthat promise to make us all purposeful in five minutes or less. For as modernpeople, we are all to be “on-purpose” or “purpose-driven.” We are all togauge our lives by their constant “intentionality.” We are all to have “missionstatements” and “measurable outcomes” to “maximize” every half hour of ourwaking moments.

Some people, it seems, gush so enthusiastically about the purpose theyhave for you that you would think it was a new discovery, and that we werethe first humans in history to realize the importance of thinking and planningahead. Such talk is fatuous, and all too often fraudulent. Like so much of the“all new,” or “latest and greatest,” it flatters to deceive and promises morethan it delivers. Were we to stop long enough to measure the results, wewould be tempted to sue for false advertising. But long before then, we are onto the next book, the next seminar, the next offer, and the next new thing.

With so many approaches to the search for purpose, how are we ever todecide? Does it make a difference which one we choose? Don’t they all comeout the same in the end? Much modern thinking would end the discussionthere. It really makes no difference, we are told. The answers are all the same.It’s only a matter of “different strokes for different folks.” There are no trueor false answers, no better or worse approaches. There’s only what’s yoursand what’s mine.

But that truly is faulty thinking. The plain facts are, first, that there aregreat differences between the answers; second, that these differences make agreat difference; and third, that the differences make a difference not only forindividuals but for entire societies and even civilizations. In short—truth doesmatter, all claims have consequences, and contrast is the mother of clarity.The ideal of the “examined life” is as important when it comes to purpose asin any part of life. It would be absurd to be rigorous in examining ourinsurance policies or preparing our income tax returns but blithely casual indeciding what is the purpose of life itself.

As it happens, the differences are clear between the major answers to thesearch for purpose in life, and they lead in entirely different directions. Takethe “big three” answers, which for all practical purposes cover the range ofoptions offered in the modern world.

The first is the Eastern answer, which includes Hinduism and Buddhism. Ifthe final reality is an impersonal ground of being (the so-called“undifferentiated impersonal”), what is the purpose of life for each of us asindividuals? The answer in brief is, “Forget it and forget yourself.” We takeourselves seriously only because we are caught in the world of illusion. So toseek fulfillment as individuals is to make matters worse, and perpetuate thedesire that perpetuates the craving that perpetuates the attachment that keepsus bound to the wheel of suffering. Seen from this perspective, freedom is notfreedom to be an individual but freedom from individuality—throughdetachment and renunciation by one path or another. Humanity must be cutfrom “the dark forest of delusion,” says Lord Krishna in the Hindu scriptures,the Bhagavad Gita. The goal of Zen, said the great Japanese master D.T.Suzuki summing up his understanding of Buddhism, is not incarnation but“excarnation.”

The second is the secularist answer, which includes atheists, mostagnostics, naturalists in science, and a large number of humanists. If the finalreality is chance and there is no God (or gods or the supernatural) to consider,then purpose is up to each of us to decide and achieve for ourselves byourselves. We don’t discover it—we decide it. In Friedrich Nietzsche’swords, our challenge is “to turn every ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it.’” InBertrand Russell’s view, we are each to be “a weary but unyielding Atlas,”carrying on our own shoulders the world of our own making. Like FrankSinatra, we must each do it “my way.”

The third is the biblical answer, which is common to both Jews and

Christians and is the main shaping force of the dynamic sense of purposecharacteristic in Western civilizations. From this perspective, the final realityis neither chance nor an impersonal ground of being but an infinite personalGod who has created us in his image and calls us into relationship withhimself. Our life-purpose therefore comes from two sources at once—who weare created to be and who we are called to be. Not only is this call of ourCreator the source of the deepest self-discoveries and growth in life, it givesour lives an inspiration and a dynamism that transforms them into anenterprise beyond any comparison.

Have you concluded that your desire for purpose is an illusion? Thenfollow the Eastern masters to their various states of detachment. Have youdetermined that your purpose is something you must figure out yourself andaccomplish all on your own? There are many secularist thinkers to cheer youon in the attempt. Or are you open to the possibility that there is one whocreated you to be who you are and calls you to be who he alone knows youcan be? Then listen to Jesus of Nazareth and his two words that changed theworld— “Follow me.”

This is no time to fall for the lazy person’s mantra that differences don’tmake a difference. This is no time to mouth empty slogans such as “make alife, not a living,” when the only difference between the two is the words.This is no time to allow people to mumble on about “callings” when theydon’t realize there can be no calling without a Caller. Survey the restlesspanorama of the human quest for purpose and fulfillment and you will see theempty and the inadequate answers drop out of the running. And at the end ofyour examination you will see that the real notion of calling is the “ultimatewhy” for human living. Answer the call of your great Creator. Become anentrepreneur of life and see all of life as an enterprise transformed by his call.Count the cost, consider the risks, and set out each day on a venture tomultiply your gifts and opportunities and bring glory to God and add value toour world. Answering the call is the road to purpose and fulfillment in yourlife. It is this powerful and precious notion that we will be exploring together.

OS GUINNESSMcLean, Virginia

May 2003

A

1

THE ULTIMATE WHY

s you know, I have been very fortunate in my career and I’ve made a lot ofmoney—far more than I ever dreamed of, far more than I could everspend, far more than my family needs.” The speaker was a prominent

businessman at a conference near Oxford University. The strength of hisdetermination and character showed in his face, but a moment’s hesitationbetrayed deeper emotions hidden behind the outward intensity. A single tearrolled slowly down his well-tanned cheek.

“To be honest, one of my motives for making so much money was simple—to have the money to hire people to do what I don’t like doing. But there’sone thing I’ve never been able to hire anyone to do for me: find my own senseof purpose and fulfillment. I’d give anything to discover that.”

In more than thirty years of public speaking and in countless conversationsaround the world, I have heard that issue come up more than any other. Atsome point every one of us confronts the question: How do I find and fulfillthe central purpose of my life? Other questions may be logically prior to andlie even deeper than this one—for example, Who am I? What is the meaningof life itself? But few questions are raised more loudly and more insistentlytoday than the first. As modern people we are all on a search for significance.We desire to make a difference. We long to leave a legacy. We yearn, asRalph Waldo Emerson put it, “to leave the world a bit better.” Our passion isto know that we are fulfilling the purpose for which we are here on earth.

All other standards of success—wealth, power, position, knowledge,friendships—grow tinny and hollow if we do not satisfy this deeper longing.For some people the hollowness leads to what Henry Thoreau described as“lives of quiet desperation”; for others the emptiness and aimlessness deepeninto a stronger despair. In an early draft of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The BrothersKaramazov, the Inquisitor gives a terrifying account of what happens to thehuman soul when it doubts its purpose: “For the secret of man’s being is notonly to live . . . but to live for something definite. Without a firm notion of

what he is living for, man will not accept life and will rather destroy himselfthan remain on earth. . . .”

Call it the greatest good (summum bonum), the ultimate end, the meaningof life, or whatever you choose. But finding and fulfilling the purpose of ourlives comes up in myriad ways and in all the seasons of our lives:

Teenagers feel it as the world of freedom beyond home and secondaryschool beckons with a dizzying range of choices.

Graduate students confront it when the excitement of “the world is myoyster” is chilled by the thought that opening up one choice means closingdown others.

Those in their early thirties know it when their daily work assumes its ownbrute reality beyond their earlier considerations of the wishes of their parents,the fashions of their peers, and the allure of salary and career prospects.

People in midlife face it when a mismatch between their gifts and theirwork reminds them daily that they are square pegs in round holes. Can theysee themselves “doing that for the rest of their lives”?

Mothers feel it when their children grow up, and they wonder which highpurpose will fill the void in the next stage of their lives.

People in their forties and fifties with enormous success suddenly come upagainst it when their accomplishments raise questions concerning the socialresponsibility of their success and, deeper still, the purpose of their lives.

People confront it in all the varying transitions of life—from movinghomes to switching jobs to breakdowns in marriage to crises of health.Negotiating the changes feels longer and worse than the changes themselvesbecause transition challenges our sense of personal meaning.

Those in their later years often face it again. What does life add up to?Were their successes real, and were they worth the trade-offs? Having gaineda whole world, however huge or tiny, have we sold our souls cheaply andmissed the point of it all? As Walker Percy wrote, “You can get all A’s andstill flunk life.”

This issue, the question of his own life-purpose, is what drove the Danishthinker Søren Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century. As he realized well,

personal purpose is not a matter of philosophy or theory. It is not purelyobjective, and it is not inherited like a legacy. Many a scientist has anencyclopedic knowledge of the world, many a philosopher can survey vastsystems of thought, many a theologian can unpack the profundities ofreligion, and many a journalist can seemingly speak on any topic raised. Butall that is theory and, without a sense of personal purpose, vanity.

Deep in our hearts, we all want to find and fulfill a purpose bigger thanourselves. Only such a larger purpose can inspire us to heights we know wecould never reach on our own. For each of us the real purpose is personal andpassionate: to know what we are here to do, and why. Kierkegaard wrote inhis Journal: “The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wantsme to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea forwhich I can live and die.”

In our own day this question is urgent in the highly modern parts of theworld, and there is a simple reason why. Three factors have converged to fuela search for significance without precedent in human history. First, the searchfor the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences ashuman beings. Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful liveshas been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximumopportunity for choice and change in all we do. Third, fulfillment of thesearch for purpose is thwarted by a stunning fact: Out of more than a score ofgreat civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the veryfirst to have no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life. Thusmore ignorance, confusion—and longing—surround this topic now than atalmost any time in history. The trouble is that, as modern people, we have toomuch to live with and too little to live for. Some feel they have time but notenough money; others feel they have money but not enough time. But formost of us, in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty.

This book is for all who long to find and fulfill the purpose of their lives. Itargues that this purpose can be found only when we discover the specificpurpose for which we were created and to which we are called. Answering thecall of our Creator is “the ultimate why” for living, the highest source ofpurpose in human existence. Apart from such a calling, all hope ofdiscovering purpose (as in the current talk of shifting “from success tosignificance”) will end in disappointment. To be sure, calling is not what it iscommonly thought to be. It has to be dug out from under the rubble ofignorance and confusion. And, uncomfortably, it often flies directly in the

face of our human inclinations. But nothing short of God’s call can groundand fulfill the truest human desire for purpose.

The inadequacy of other answers is growing clearer by the day. Capitalism,for all its creativity and fruitfulness, falls short when challenged to answer thequestion “Why?” By itself it is literally meaning-less, in that it is only amechanism, not a source of meaning. So too are politics, science, psychology,management, self-help techniques, and a host of other modern theories. WhatTolstoy wrote of science applies to all of them: “Science is meaninglessbecause it gives no answer to our question, the only question important to us,‘what shall we do and how shall we live?’” There is no answer outside a questfor purpose and no answer to the quest is deeper and more satisfying thananswering the call.

What do I mean by “calling”? For the moment let me say simply thatcalling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everythingwe are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a specialdevotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.

This truth—calling—has been a driving force in many of the greatest“leaps forward” in world history—the constitution of the Jewish nation atMount Sinai, the birth of the Christian movement in Galilee, and thesixteenth-century Reformation and its incalculable impetus to the rise of themodern world, to name a few. Little wonder that the rediscovery of callingshould be critical today, not least in satisfying the passion for purpose ofmillions of questing modern people.

For whom is this book written? For all who seek such purpose. For all,whether believers or seekers, who are open to the call of the most influentialperson in history—Jesus of Nazareth. In particular, this book is written forthose who know that their source of purpose must rise above the highest ofself-help humanist hopes and who long for their faith to have integrity andeffectiveness in the face of all the challenges of the modern world.

Let me speak personally. I’ve written several books during the last twenty-five years, but no book has burned within me longer or more fiercely than thisone. The truth of calling has been as important to me in my journey of faith asany truth of the gospel of Jesus. In my early days of following Jesus, I wasnearly swayed by others to head toward spheres of work they believed wereworthier for everyone and right for me. If I was truly dedicated, they said, Ishould train to be a minister or a missionary. (We will examine this fallacy of

“fulltime religious service” in chapter 4.) Coming to understand callingliberated me from their well-meaning but false teaching and set my feet on thepath that has been God’s way for me.

I did not know it then, but the start of my search (and the genesis of thisbook) lay in a chance conversation in the 1960s, in the days before self-service gas stations. I had just had my car filled up with gas and enjoyed amarvelously rich conversation with the pump attendant. As I turned the keyand the engine of the forty-year-old Austin Seven roared to life, a thoughtsuddenly hit me with the force of an avalanche: This man was the first personI had spoken to in a week who was not a church member. I was in danger ofbeing drawn into a religious ghetto.

Urged on all sides to see that, because I had come to faith, my future mustlie in the ministry, I had volunteered to work in a well-known church for ninemonths—and was miserable. To be fair, I admired the pastor and the peopleand enjoyed much of the work. But it just wasn’t me. My passion was to relatemy faith to the exciting and exploding secular world of early 1960s Europe,but there was little or no scope for that in the ministry. Ten minutes ofconversation with a friendly gas pump attendant on a beautiful spring eveningin Southampton, England, and I knew once and for all that I was not cut out tobe a minister.

Needless to say, recognizing who we aren’t is only the first step towardknowing who we are. Escape from a false sense of life-purpose is onlyliberating if it leads to a true one. Journalist Ambrose Bierce reached onlyhalfway. “When I was in my twenties,” he wrote, “I concluded one day that Iwas not a poet. It was the bitterest moment of my life.”

Looking back on the years since my conversation at the gas station, I cansee that calling was positive for me, not negative. Released from what was“not me,” my discovery of my calling enabled me to find what I was. Havingwrestled with the stirring saga of calling in history and having taken up thechallenge of God’s individual call to me, I have been mastered by this truth.God’s call has become a sure beacon ahead of me and a blazing fire withinme as I have tried to figure out my way and negotiate the challenges of theextraordinary times in which we live. The chapters that follow are notacademic or theoretical; they have been hammered out on the anvil of myown experience.

Do you long to discover your own sense of purpose and fulfillment? Let me

be plain. You will not find here a “one-page executive summary,” a “how-tomanual,” a “twelve-step program,” or a readymade “game plan” for figuringout the rest of your life. What you will find may point you toward one of themost powerful and truly awesome truths that has ever arrested the humanheart.

“In Ages of Faith,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “the final aim of life isplaced beyond life.” That is what calling does. “Follow me,” Jesus said twothousand years ago, and he changed the course of history. That is why callingprovides the Archimedean point by which faith moves the world. That is whycalling is the most comprehensive reorientation and the most profoundmotivation in human experience—the ultimate Why for living in all history.Calling begins and ends such ages, and lives, of faith by placing the final aimof life beyond the world where it was meant to be. Answering the call is theway to find and fulfill the central purpose of your life.

Do you have a reason for being, a focused sense of purpose in your life? Or isyour life the product of shifting resolutions and the myriad pulls of forces outsideyourself ? Do you want to go beyond success to significance? Have you come torealize that self-reliance always falls short and that world-denying solutionsprovide no answer in the end? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.

J

5

BY HIM, TO HIM, FOR HIM

obs are not big enough for people. It’s not just the assembly line workerwhose job is too small for his spirit, you know. A job like mine, if youreally put your spirit into it, you would sabotage immediately. You don’t

dare. So you absent your spirit from it. My mind has been so divorced frommy job, except as a source of income, it’s really absurd.”

The speaker, Norah Watson, was a twenty-eight-year-old Pennsylvaniawriter who worked for an institution that published health-care literature. Shewas being interviewed by Studs Terkel for his book Working, a series ofinterviews with ordinary people who “talk about what they do all day andhow they feel about what they do.”

Terkel realized, as he set out in his interviews, that working is about thesearch for daily meaning in the struggle for daily bread. Most people, hefound, live somewhere between a grudging acceptance of their job and anactive dislike of it. But a recurring theme in the interviews is a yearning for asense of meaning that comes when calling precedes and overarches work andcareer.

Norah Watson’s frustration was not fueled simply by her job. It came asmuch from the contrast between her experience and her father’s, as a pastor ina small mountain town in Western Pennsylvania. “My father was a preacher,”she explained. “I didn’t like what he was doing, but it was his vocation. Thatwas the good part of it. It was not just: go to work in the morning and punch atime clock. It was a profession of himself. I expected work to be like that.”

Watson had started out idealistically—going to work early, staying late,going the extra mile on each assignment, and then asking for more. But, shesays, “I found out I was wrecking the curve, I was out of line. The people, justas capable as I and just as ready to produce, had realized it was pointless, andhad cut back.”

Eventually Watson followed suit and was surprised to discover: “The

amazing, absurd thing was that once I decided to stop doing a good job,people recognized a kind of authority in me. Now I’m just moving ahead likeblazes.”

But Watson knew she couldn’t be satisfied with success at such a cynicalprice. Her conscience was whispering in one ear: “It’s simply that I know I’mvegetating and being paid to do exactly that.” And her heart was whisperingin the other: “For all that was bad about my father’s vocation,” she sighed,“he showed me it was possible to fuse your life to your work. . . . There’snothing I would enjoy more than a job that was so meaningful that I brought ithome.”

Norah Watson’s pained candor about her work would not speak for those atthe bottom of the totem pole or for those at the top. To the former suchanalysis would be an unaffordable luxury. They work to put bread on thetable. To the latter it would be redundant; their work is often as satisfying andhandsomely remunerated as work can get. But Norah Watson speaks forcountless people in modern society who face the Catch-22 of modern work.Neither work nor career can be fully satisfying without a deeper sense ofcalling—but “calling” itself is empty and indistinguishable from work unlessthere is Someone who calls.

The same dilemma is equally striking at the theoretical level. For example,one contemporary bestseller argues—admirably—that we need to “make alife, not just a living,” and that to do this we need to inject “values andvocation” back into the world of work. With such a “new paradigm,” the bookclaims, work can become “a vehicle for transformation,” personally andsocially.

On what basis? The author dusts off the word calling to give a sense ofmeaning and high purpose to work. But what is calling for those, like her,who believe that there is no personal God to call? Her answer is to redefinevocation as “the call, the summons of that which needs doing.”

What sort of answer is this? Modern work lacks meaning. Meaning comeswith a sense of calling. But calling is only the summons of what needs doing.So the answer to meaningless work is the requirement to do what needs doing—often more meaningless work. Tell that to the paper pusher in thegovernment office or the widget maker on the factory assembly line. Workthat feels meaningless is transformed, she says, by being made into work“which needs doing.” Stripped of the semantic magic of the word calling, the

solution is circular. It solves nothing and leaves us where we started.

The hollowness of the argument comes out most clearly in the author’slaudable attempt to propose an answer to “workaholism.” “The workaholic,”she writes, “like an alcoholic, is indiscriminate in his compulsion. Heattempts to find meaning by working. The individual with vocation, on theother hand, finds meaningful work.”

But again notice the sleight of hand. True vocation, when there is a Callerto call, is truly different from workaholism. But the difference between theworkaholic who wants to “find meaning by work” and the worker whose“vocation” is to do “that which needs doing” is too slight for comfort. Abetter and more honest solution is needed.

THE “PROTESTANT DISTORTION”

Such contortions in the modern effort to reinvest work with dignitypinpoint the second of the two grand distortions that cripple calling—the“Protestant distortion.” Indeed, these contortions are a direct result of theProtestant distortion. Whereas the Catholic distortion is a spiritual form ofdualism, elevating the spiritual at the expense of the secular, the Protestantdistortion is a secular form of dualism, elevating the secular at the expense ofthe spiritual.

Under the pressure of the modern world, the Protestant distortion is moreextreme. It severs the secular from the spiritual altogether and reducesvocation to an alternative word for work. In so doing, it completely betraysthe purpose of calling and, ironically, activates a counterreaction that swingsback to the Catholic distortion again. Better, it would seem, the dualism ofmaking calling purely spiritual than the dualism of making calling purelysecular.

The seeds of the Protestant distortion can be traced right back to thePuritans themselves. Overall, the Puritans were magnificent champions ofcalling. Like the earlier reformers, the best and clearest thinking of themnever split the primary call (“by God, to God, for God”) from the secondarycall (“everyone, everywhere, in everything”).

John Calvin, it is true, does come close to speaking of a calling as equatedwith work. For Martin Luther, believers answer the call when through faiththey serve God in their work, but Calvin sometimes speaks more boldly in

equating calling and work. For both reformers, there were some occupationsthat could not be from God and, therefore, could never really be viewed asvocations. But Calvin in his tract “Against the Libertines” refers even to theseillegitimate occupations as vocations—although sarcastically. “Let a brothelkeeper . . . ply his trade . . . let a thief steal boldly, for each is pursuing hisvocation.”

But what may have been a latent imbalance earlier grows steadily in thePuritan era into a full-grown distortion. Slowly such words as work, trade,employment, and occupation came to be used interchangeably with callingand vocation. As this happened, the guidelines for callings shifted; instead ofbeing directed by the commands of God, they were seen as directed by dutiesand roles in society. Eventually the day came when faith and calling wereseparated completely. The original demand that each Christian should have acalling was boiled down to the demand that each citizen should have a job.

Finally, the wheel came full circle. Callings had become jobs and jobs hadbecome corrupt, so the radical seventeenth-century Protestant group, theDiggers, called for the abolition of callings altogether. Gerrard Winstanley, ina 1650 tract in England, wrote: “The judges and law officers buy and selljustice for money, and wipe their mouth like Solomon’s whore and say ‘It ismy calling,’ and are never troubled at it.” Thus, ironically, whereas thereformers had set out the rediscovery of “calling” as a consequence of truefaith, some of their spiritual descendants called for the “abolition ofcallings”—also as a consequence of true faith.

To be sure, the tight logic of the Diggers was too radical for most people.In the broad mainstream of European and American life, the steadysecularization of calling continued apace. Slowly but surely secondarycallings swallowed up the primary calling. By the high noon of the IndustrialRevolution, the results were complete and devastating.

On the one hand, the triumph of secondary callings over the primary callingmeant that work was made sacred. Whereas the Bible is realistic about work,seeing it after the fall as both creative and cursed, the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries lost the balance. Work was not only entirely good, but italso was virtually made holy in a crescendo of enthusiasm that was latertermed “the Protestant ethic.” “The man who builds a factory builds atemple,” President Coolidge declared. “The man who works there worshipsthere.” “Work,” Henry Ford proclaimed, “is the salvation of the human race,morally, physically, socially.”

On the other hand, the same triumph meant that calling was made secular.Like a booster rocket discarded when burned out, the dynamic of “calling”had launched the good ship “work” into space and had fallen away. Vocationcould now be saved as a genteel word for lesser paid but sacrificial workers(such as nurses), for the religious (such as missionaries), and for the morepractically oriented. Students attended the new “vocational colleges” andreceived “vocational training” because they were not up to the standard of theliberal arts colleges and universities.

The condescension of such attitudes is as bad as the distortion of vocationon which it is based. Whereas the Protestant reformers had regarded “worldlycalling,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words, as “the final, radical protest againstthe world,” the Protestant deformers made it the religious sanction ofworldliness. Thus “costly grace was turned into cheap grace withoutdiscipleship.”

Is there a way back from the disaster of the Protestant distortion? At leasttwo things are required: the debunking of the notion of calling without aCaller and the restoring of the primacy of the primary calling.

First, we must resolutely refuse to play the word games that pretend callingmeans anything without a Caller—and we must not allow people to play suchgames on us. A hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche rightly scorned thosewho said, “God is dead” and went on living exactly the same as before. Oneof those in his sights was novelist George Eliot who wrote, “God is‘inconceivable’ and immortality ‘unbelievable,’ but duty is nonetheless‘peremptory and absolute.’”

Nietzsche derided such people as “odious windbags of progressiveoptimism” who think it possible to have Christian morality without Christianfaith. “They are rid of the Christian God,” he wrote in Twilight of the Idols,“and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to the Christianmorality. . . . When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right toChristian morality out from under one’s feet.”

What is true of morality is true of calling too. In C. S. Lewis’s homespunpicture, those who still conjure meaning out of calling when they do notbelieve there is a Caller are as silly as “the woman in the first war who saidthat if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because theyalways ate toast.” If there is no Caller, there are no callings—only work.

Second, and more positively, we must restore the primary calling to itsprimary place by restoring the worship that is its setting and the dedication toJesus that is its heart. There is no surer guide here than the devotional writerOswald Chambers. “Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to JesusChrist,” he wrote. “The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service forHim. . . . The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a callto do something for Him.”

Do we enjoy our work, love our work, virtually worship our work so thatour devotion to Jesus is off-center? Do we put our emphasis on service, orusefulness, or being productive in working for God— at his expense? Do westrive to prove our own significance? To make a difference in the world? Tocarve our names in marble on the monuments of time?

The call of God blocks the path of all such deeply human tendencies. Weare not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called toSomeone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key toanswering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above Godhimself. As Chambers said, “The men and women Our Lord sends out on Hisenterprises are the ordinary human stuff, plus dominating devotion to Himselfwrought by the Holy Spirit.” The most frequent phrase in his writings: “Beabsolutely His.”

In sum, we must avoid the two distortions by keeping the two callingstogether, stressing the primary calling to counter the Protestant distortion andsecondary callings to counter the Catholic distortion. Whereas dualismcripples calling, a holistic understanding releases its power—the passion to beGod’s concentrates the energy of all who answer the call.

Do you want to be his, entirely his, at all costs his, and forever his so thatsecondary things remain so and first things are always first? Listen to Jesus ofNazareth; answer his call.

STUDY GUIDE

Chapter 1

THE ULTIMATE WHY

1. What event, relationship, or situation has triggered a deep yearning forpurpose and meaning in your own life?

2. Why do times of transition challenge our sense of personal meaning?

3. What does the author mean by “we have too much to live with and toolittle to live for”? How have you seen this evidenced in your ownlife and in the lives of people you know?

4. Why are modern theories—such as capitalism, politics, or psychology—not adequate in answering our deeper questions of purpose andmeaning?

5. Why did you choose the career path you are on? Have you everexperienced “It just wasn’t me”? What did you do about it?

6. How would your life be different if you lived out your “calling” asexplained by the author?

Scripture Focus: Read Genesis 1. Why did God create the world and humanbeings? What is different about the creation of humans and everything prior?For what purpose did God make man and woman?

Chapter 5

BY HIM, TO HIM, FOR HIM

1. Explain the frustrations that Norah Watson has with her job. What inher father’s career experience does she most desire for herself?

2. Studs Terkel found “most people . . . live somewhere between agrudging acceptance of their job and an active dislike of it.” Wheredo you find yourself on this continuum—or are you closer toNorah’s father? Why do you feel this way about your work?

3. How does the Protestant distortion of calling actually contradict itstrue purposes? Explain how this distortion confuses calling andvocation.

4. How has your understanding of calling and vocation been affected bythe Protestant distortion?

5. What is the biblical view of work? How would this perspective changethe way you see your career or job?

6. Why does a calling without a Caller become nothing more than work?

7. How can service for God potentially compete with the primarycalling?

Scripture Focus: Read Exodus 35:30–36:2. Who does God call in thispassage? How are they able to accomplish the task to which he calls them?How is this an example of the primary and secondary calling functioningproperly?